Creativity Emerges from Spontaneous Neural Activity
Nicola Tesla thought up his alternating current induction motor while walking, Margaret Atwood comes up with ideas while bird-watching, and Archimedes was famously inspired to formulate the laws of buoyancy...
Ancient Hominins Used Fire to Make Stone Tools
Our ancestors not only knew how to use fire, they also developed sophisticated technologies for making tools. Weizmann Institute of Science research, recently published in Nature Human Behaviour, suggest that...
Bacteria Could Provide us with the Next Antivirals
By tracking the evolution of what may be our oldest means of fighting off viral infection, a group at the Weizmann Institute of Science has uncovered a gold mine of...
Profiling COVID-19
A research team at the Weizmann Institute of Science and Israel Institute for Biological Research, in Ness Ziona, Israel, has a new approach to understanding the COVID-19 virus that may...
Young at Heart: Restoring Cardiac Function with a Matrix Molecule
Pre-clinical studies at the Weizmann Institute of Research suggest a protein called Agrin could limit scarring and promote natural repair mechanisms after a heart attack. Heart disease is the number...
Targeting a Chronic Pain Gateway Could Bring Relief
A new approach to chronic pain treatment developed by the Weizmann Institute of Science targets a molecule that moves pain messages into nerve cell nuclei. Something like a quarter of...
New Method Sees Into More Cells Than Ever Before
A new technology developed at the Weizmann Institute of Science may help answer outstanding questions about the immune system, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and more. Invading cells’ private space – prying into...
Pregnant Women’s viral Immune Response could Affect Foetal Brain Cells
A new study in mice at the Weizmann Institute of Science show that the mother’s natural anti-viral proteins disrupted the development of neural circuits in the foetus. Findings emerging from...
A New Approach to Tailoring Cancer Therapy: Tapping into Signalling Activities in Cancer Cells
Choosing the right drug for each cancer patient is key to successful treatment, but currently physicians have few reliable pointers to guide them in designing treatment protocols. Researchers at the...
Artificial Cells Produce Parts of Viruses for Safe Studies
A group at the Weizmann Institute of Science has demonstrated the production of protein assembly lines on a silicon chip. Scientists searching for better diagnostic tests, drugs or vaccines against...
What the Fish Heart Knows
When the heart recovers from injury, the blood flowing through its vessels is essential. But lymph – the colourless fluid that circulates in a parallel network – and the lymphatic...
Which Came First? Amino acids or proteins?
What did the very first proteins that appeared on Earth around 3.7 billion years ago look like? Now an experiment in recreating primordial proteins solves a long-standing riddle. Professor Dan...
Scientists’ Ice Findings Could Help Measure Earth’s Magnetic History
Among other things, the history of our planet has been written in the periodic reversal of its magnetic poles. Scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science have now proposed a...
What Does the ‘Love Hormone’ Do? It’s Complicated
A new Weizmann Institute of Science study of mice in a semi-natural setting shows how the hormone oxytocin can amplify aggression as well as friendliness. During the pandemic lockdown, as...
Virtually Visit the Weizmann Institute of Science
A new video series from the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Levinson Visitor’s Center is being produced where Weizmann Institute scientists and employees speak of their favorite spots and hidden gems...
Paying the Price of Protection
Is the wanton killing of cells in autoimmune disease a case of mistaken identity, or does it arise from an important physiological service? The first is the commonly accepted view...
NASA’s Next Destination? The Hope is Neptune as Trident Team Reaches Discovery Program Finals
In 2026 a super accurate clock planned by the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Israeli Space Agency (ISA) and an Israeli company, Accubeat – named The Trident Team – could...
‘Sniff Test’ Predicts Recovery of Consciousness in Brain-Injured Patients
If an unconscious person responds to smell through a slight change in their nasal airflow pattern – they are likely to regain consciousness. This is the conclusion of a new...
The Self-Synthesising Ribosome: A Cellular Factory on a Chip
Scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science have produced a cellular factory-on-a-chip which could be used to design, produce and test drugs against antibiotic resistant bacteria. The ribosome is a...
Self-Monitoring Sense of Smell May Help Detect Coronavirus – Online Tool Developed
Weizmann Institute scientists, in collaboration with the Edith Wolfson Medical Center, have developed SmellTracker – an online platform that enables self-monitoring of an individual’s sense of smell – for the...